Part 4
Evelyn spoke from the window.
“It said the storage agreement had expired.”
Daniel looked at her.
“You read it?”
“It was left open.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Mara said.
Evelyn’s gaze remained steady.
Daniel felt something inside him begin to separate into pieces.
“What storage agreement?”
Mara closed her eyes.
“The remaining embryos.”
The words brought back a white room, paper bracelets, plastic cups of bad coffee, and Daniel signing forms while Mara stared at a diagram of cell division taped to the wall.
They had created six embryos.
Two were transferred.
One became the pregnancy they lost at nine weeks.
The other did not implant.
Three were genetically unsuitable.
Daniel had believed the sixth had also been discarded.
“There was one left?”
Mara nodded.
“Why didn’t I know?”
“I found out after the miscarriage.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you said you were done.”
He remembered saying it.
Not to her.
In the kitchen, to Evelyn, three days after the procedure that ended the miscarriage. He had said he could not watch Mara go through it again. He had meant pain. He had meant needles, waiting rooms, hope becoming arithmetic.
He had not understood that Evelyn would repeat his words as a verdict.
“Mara, I said I was done with the clinic for a while.”
“You said you wanted to try naturally.”
“I did.”
“You said you didn’t want another frozen embryo deciding our lives.”
Daniel looked down.
He had said that too.
He had forgotten.
Mara had not.
“So you kept paying for storage?”
“Yes.”
“For two years?”
“Yes.”
“With what money?”
“My account.”
Daniel felt the question turn ugly as soon as he asked it.
Mara’s expression changed.
“My freelance account.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“You did.”
“I meant why hide it?”
“Because every time I tried to tell you, your mother was here.”
Evelyn laughed softly.
“That is convenient.”
Mara turned toward her.
“You came every Sunday.”
“Because you were grieving.”
“You brought lists.”
“Of doctors.”
“Of supplements. Diets. Therapists. Adoption agencies.”
“I was offering options.”
“You were telling me to hurry up and become useful again.”
Evelyn’s face went rigid.
Daniel sat between them, understanding too late that many conversations had occurred in his presence without his hearing their meaning.
He touched Mara’s wrist.
“What did the letter say?”
“That the clinic needs a decision by Friday. Renew storage, transfer ownership, donate it for research, or let it be discarded.”
“And what did you decide?”
“I renewed it.”
Evelyn spoke immediately.
“Without his consent.”
Mara’s chin trembled.
“It is half mine.”
“It is legally shared material.”
“You called someone about that?” Daniel asked his mother.
Evelyn folded her hands in her lap.
“I called the clinic’s former administrator.”
“Why?”
“To ask whether Mara could make the decision alone.”
“Why do you care?”
Evelyn looked toward Mara’s stomach.
Daniel saw the answer before she said it.
“Because the embryo is male.”
Silence followed.
Even the room seemed to lose its ordinary sounds. The low hum of the lamp. The faint rush of air from the vent. A car passing somewhere beyond the curtains.
Daniel stared at Mara.
“You knew?”
She nodded.
“How?”
“The clinic report.”
“And this baby?”
“A boy.”
“I know that.”
“No,” she whispered. “I mean this baby was the embryo.”
Daniel did not understand.
Mara reached for his hand and placed it over the rise of her stomach.
“This pregnancy,” she said. “He was the last embryo.”
Daniel pulled his hand back.
Not from her.
From the sentence.
“We conceived naturally.”
“I told you we did.”
His pulse began to beat in his throat.
“You were in Ohio visiting your sister when the transfer would have happened.”
“I wasn’t with Elise.”
“Where were you?”
“At the clinic.”
He stood.
The movement made the mattress shift. Mara flinched and held her belly.
Daniel stopped.
“I’m sorry.”
He crouched again.
“When?”
“Seven months ago.”
“You told me you missed your flight.”
“I did miss it. On purpose.”
He turned away and put both hands on the back of the bedside chair.
He remembered the night she returned. A delayed flight. Cold rain. Mara standing in the kitchen in a navy coat, saying Elise had caught the flu and the trip was terrible. He had warmed soup. They had watched half a movie. She fell asleep against him.
Three weeks later, she showed him a positive pregnancy test.
He cried.
Now a bowl of soup sat beside the bed, and his mother held herself very still by the window, and nothing in his life seemed to have happened in the order he believed.
“You transferred our embryo without telling me.”
Mara’s eyes closed.
“Yes.”
“Did the clinic know I didn’t consent?”
“They had the original consent for future transfers.”
“From two years earlier.”
“Yes.”
“Did you sign my name?”
“No.”
“Did anyone call me?”
“They had a form permitting either of us to authorize thaw and transfer.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You signed it.”
The sentence cut through him because it sounded like his mother.
You signed it.
He looked at Evelyn.
She was watching him carefully, as if waiting for him to return to the correct side of the room.
Mara saw it too.
“I knew you would be angry,” she said.
“Angry?”
“I knew you would say no.”
“So you did it before I could.”
Her face folded with pain again. She bent forward, one hand braced against the mattress.
Daniel’s anger vanished beneath fear.
“Mara.”
He knelt beside her.
“Breathe.”
“I am.”
“No, slowly.”
He counted with her.
Four in.
Six out.
Her grip closed around his hand hard enough to hurt.
He welcomed the pain because it told him she was still present, still strong enough to hold on.
When the spasm eased, she leaned back against the pillows.
Daniel reached for the phone.
“This conversation is over. We’re going to the hospital.”
Mara did not stop him this time.
Evelyn stood.
“Wait.”
May you like
Daniel looked at her.
His mother’s face had lost its smugness entirely.
